Another Opening...

"There's no business like show business."

Truer words have never been spoken. It is with great remorse that I have to inform you that the rights for A Chorus Line have been revoked due to a National Tour production. This news came to me and the rest of the cast on Wednesday: Only five days away from our first rehearsal! The board fought extremely hard to re-acquire the rights, but unfortunately could not get anything to come to fruition. However, a substitute production has been chosen.

Wildwood Summer Theatre will now be producing Merrily We Roll Along; a musical modeled after a play of the same name with music and lyrics by the phenomenal Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth. The show revolves around Franklin Shepard who was once a talented composer of Broadway musicals, but abandoned his true talent and friends to produce films in Hollywood. The show starts at the prime of his career and works it's way backwards to reveal memorable events which occurred along his journey. I have not had a significant amount of time to research much more into the show, but from what I have heard of cast recordings the music itself is beautifully written and has a similar sound to that of A Chorus Line. The cast has reasonably been asked to re-audition this coming week so that the production staff can best cast the new show. At this point in time, I am a nervous wreck. That is all :-)

In other news, my OTHER show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opened this weekend! In all honesty, I could not have asked for a better opening night! The cast was so charged with energy that it made the production explode with amazing-ness (a word had to be made up to describe this phenomenon). I could not be more proud of my cast! No reviews have been published yet to my knowledge, but I will post them here to be read (if they're good, of course :-) ). There will not be a performance tomorrow in observance of Memorial Day weekend, but there are two more weekends of performances to be done so don't miss out and get your tickets! The show truly is hilarious! Call 301.203.6070 for ticket information!

Here is a little write-up about the show from The Gazette, with a few quotes from yours truly.

http://www.gazette.net/stories/05272010/entepri142233_32548.php

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Magic Foot...

As it turns out, I will actually be playing the role of William Barfee in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. This is a recent under-taking because the person originally playing the role dropped out at the last minute... we'll say due to artistic differences. I have a little less than a week to learn the entire role and develop a character, not to mention I choreographed the show, so I have to focus on the rest of the cast to make sure they are hitting their marks, as well. Needless to say, I am going to be a HUGE ball of stress over the next couple weeks. However, I have faith in my cast and in myself to make this show REALLY good; it is so close we just have to polish! Which should not be too hard, since we have been running the show for more than a week now.

The show will run May 28th to June 13th, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 3 pm (there will not be a show the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend!). It will be performed on the stage of the John Addison Concert Hall at the Harmony Hall Regional Center in Fort Washington, MD.

10701 Livingston Road

Fort Washington, MD 20744

Call 301.203.6070 for ticket information!

Check back here for upcoming reviews and stories about the show!

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"Secret Garden" Review...

... with some of my photographs accompanying!!!

You can see the shots included with the article, along with a couple other's, in the post below.

The show runs the rest of this weekend and the following two weekends at the Port Tobacco Theatre in La Plata, MD. Call (301)932-6819 to make reservations or if you have any other questions :-)

It is a really great show for the entire family and has a really beautiful musical score.


http://www.somdnews.com/stories/05072010/weekmor171539_32184.shtml

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All images owned and copyrighted by Scotty Beland.

Come To My Garden

The Port Tobacco Players will be presenting a production of the musical The Secret Garden on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from now until May 23rd, 2010. This is a musical rendition of the children's story of the same name with beautiful music and a touching story that the entire family can enjoy. This particular production was directed by Amy Cooksey, with music direction by Therese Theidemann and choreography by Randy Tusing.

I had the pleasure of taking some photos of the performance during their tech week and was quite pleased with the amount of talent on the stage, especially from the younger actors! Anna Radtke plays a very dynamic Mary Lennox opposite Tori Carter's bratty, although somewhat endearing, Colin Craven. Tracy Weisemann superbly sings through the lyric soprano role of Lily, harmonizing wonderfully with Peter Ullman as Archibald Craven. Another stand-out performance for me was given by Mary Theideman, as the Craven's house-maid. Her rendition of "Hold On" was very warm and sentimental and even gave me goosebumps a couple of times. The ensemble for this show was also extremely solid, which was quite a task for some of the challenging vocal parts throughout the score of this show.

Here are some pictures :-)

Peter Ullman as Archibald (L) and Anna Radtke as Mary (R)

Anna Radtke as Mary (L) and Tori Carter as Colin (R)

Mike Mickey as Neville Craven (L) and Anna Radtke as Mary (R)

Mary Theideman as Martha

Tori Carter as Colin (L), Blake Racer as Dickon (C), and Anna Radtke as Mary (R)


You can see a full cast list and purchase tickets for the remaining performances by going to http://www.ptplayers.com/

In other news, I recently had the pleasure of seeing Anne Arundel Community College's production of Urinetown a couple of weekends ago, and I absolutely loved it! I am usually not a fan of overtly, for lack of a better term, "campy" shows, but this one was well done enough that I did not even notice. I went to support a friend of mine, Kasey Staniszewski, who played Hope Cladwell in the show. This was my first time seeing her in a leading role, and also the first time I had actually heard her sing, and it was definitely nice to see! Not to mention, she looked absolutely gorgeous (as per usual). Although this show is over now, it was definitely a must-see! I also would like to congratulate Magruder High School on their production of Curtains. I have never been so thoroughly impressed by a local high school theatre group, especially on a show as gargantuan as such. The ensemble was pure brilliance in the vocal department and even had amazing choreography to boot. I was pleased to find out that the show was choreographed by Kristina Friedgen who will be my director for A Chorus Line this summer! A few stand-out performers included Rachel Kelly as Carmen Bernstein, Kelly Ohanian as Niki Harris, Matt Dyer as Lt. Frank Cioffi and Emily Reggia as Bambi. Oh, and Sonia Galiber played an AMAZING clarinet solo, too! ;-) Here's to a job well done!

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All images owned and copyrighted by Scotty Beland.

Why I Do What I Do...

I'm in love with this tap sequence... someone please teach it to me.

Kthanks.

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It is my pleasure to announce...

... that a musical has won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama after a 14 year hiatus! Yes, that is correct. This award has not been won by a musical in 14 years, the previous winner being RENT. Without further ado... the winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama is...

NEXT TO NORMAL

Now this is even more amazing to me than it may seem to others because this happens to be one of my favorite new shows. It is a rock musical written by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey and opened on Broadway in April of 2009, after a run at the Arena Stage in Crystal City, VA. It is about a married woman's struggle with coping mechanisms, bi-polar disorder and depression as well as a family's despair in the middle of an emotional crisis. The show also won Tony Awards in 2009 for Best Score, while Tom Kitt earned the Best Orchestrations award. The show's star, Alice Ripley, also earned a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical.

Here's a taste of the show.



On another note, my dear friend Kylie Oosterink did a fantastic job in her high school's production of Thoroughly Modern Millie! She portrayed the role of Miss Dorothy Brown as well as anyone I've seen. She is definitely leaving at the top of the playing field and I couldn't be more proud! All in all, the production as a whole was good considering it was a high school group. Of course, you could tell who really wanted to be there and who didn't, but what else can you expect from a large group of hormonal teenagers. Alina Stone played a convincing Millie Dillmount and definitely had the vocal chops for the role, which was surprising considering her age. Another stand-out performer for me was Tony Oblen. He played an adequate Jimmy Smith, and although I did get very nervous for some of the higher parts in his songs, he did pull them off very well (with some modifications, but that's okay, we've all done it).

That is pretty much all I have for today, just decided to stop in with that amazing news about the Pulitzer. Soooooooooo... keep it classy!

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One Singular Sensation!

As I enter the throws of a new quarter of college, I have so much stuff coming up that I need to start working on. I got my exit portfolio back from pre-assessment and was happy to find to find out that it is a passable book! However, that's not good enough for me, so I have decided to work extra hard on it, as well as my other book, to make them AMAZING by the time I graduate in December. This quarter I will be taking a Conceptual Thinking class which seems like it will be a really interesting class that will get me to think outside the box, as well as a Science of Light class (BOOOOORING) and my exit portfolio class so I can work on my book for graduation. I will still be working on my theatre stuff throughout the quarter in order to have as much prepared as possible for my other book to put up in December with the rest of my show, so please let me know if you know any performances I can photograph or if you're an actor and want to be a character from a show for my series! I need to do as many as possible so I can have a strong collection.

In other theatrical news... for those of you who have been keeping track of what I've been doing, we have cast ...Spelling Bee and we could not be happier with our cast. The show will be going up at the end of May/beginning of June so hopefully some of you can make it out to see! The show is being produced by Leslie Luense, directed by Banafsheh Wallace, music directed by KJ Jacks, with choreography by Yours Truly, Scotty Beland. We had a really small turn-out of auditioners, but we were extremelyfortunate to get the exact auditioners we needed to fill the roles. This cast has a really high amount of energy, which is perfect for a show about a bunch of pre-pubescent kids competing in a county-wide spelling bee, and plenty of talent to boot. And without further ado... here is the cast list.

Cast:
Rona Lisa Peretti - Kate Dehnis
Chip Tolentino - Frank Brizzi
Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre - Jennifer Blanton
Leaf Coneybear - Charles Watley
Willam Barfee - Davey Jones
Marcy Park - Aimee Bonnet
Olive Ostrovsky - Samantha Battersby
Douglas Panch - Robert Rausch
Mitch Mahoney - Kenny Waters



For more information go to http://www.tantallonstage.com

I also would like to take this time to announce that I got cast in Wildwood Summer Theatre's production of A Chorus Line! The show will be going up in July/August and I will be playing the role of Zach. Zach is the choreographer/director of the show that all the dancers are auditioning for... So, I pretty much get to be in the entire show and will have tons of lines to learn! The role doesn't sing or dance much, so I still haven't figured out if I got the role because they hate how I sing/dance hahah, but I'd like to think I got it because I'm good at what I do. A good friend of mine also got cast and she will be playing the role of Cassie (who happens to be Zach's ex) so that will make the show about a million times more fun that it's already going to be.

Here is the rest of the cast list... http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/notes/wildwood-summer-theatre/cast-list-a-chorus-line/106788402692216

Anywho, that's pretty much all I have for now that is new... but check back soon for a review of a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie which I will be seeing on Saturday, and hopefully for some new pictures!

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